I don’t understand why Chinese’s drivers always call. Back in the Uber days the Chinese Uber drivers always called as well. Over the summer I spent some time in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand, and last winter I was in several European countries, the Uber drivers never called, they just turned up. With Didi, I almost always select the Chinese option that translates to I am at the point I say I am at on the GPS. Yet about 50% of the time they still call, leaving me either saying “Nihao Chifu, ding wei, ding wei, ding wei” the driver sounding confused and repeating the same thing I couldn’t understand, me repeating ding wei, and after a few seconds he says “halla” and I say “xie xie” and hang up.

Then about 2 minutes later as I am walking to my pick up point, and I see on the GPS he is waiting where he should, he will call me again, and I will say Masheng, Masheng Masheng, and he will repeat everything as if now I understand Chinese, and I will repeat Masheng, masheng, he will sa Halla, I will see xie xie, hang up, get in the car about 30 seconds later, and he will laugh about how confusing it all was.

This leaves out the 10% of trips where the driver just drives clear past the pick up point, and I see him blocks away, and he calls me and yells at me, and I don’t have the Chinese to fix the situation, and eventually he cancels and my Didi rating gets dinged.

Also, I never use Didi to leave the airport. I find that the taxi lines are never that long. It just is not worth the hassle. Once, last summer when I was with my girlfriend who is also foreign, but studied Chinese in university but she is better at reading and writing than speaking, we took a Didi out of PEK. It was a bit of a nightmarish experience, we spent like 10 minutes trying to find eachother in the parking garage.